Philadelphia 76ers Notebook: Fleet-footed Ivey gets start

MILWAUKEE — The stat sheets don’t do any justice to Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis, the starting guards for Milwaukee. No amount of black ink on white paper can illustrate just how fast they are.

So are they the quickest backcourt in the league?

“Close, close. (Russell) Westbrook and me might be the other one,” said Sixers coach Doug Collins, in a nod to Oklahoma City’s point guard.

Needing to counter with some swift feet of their own, the Sixers started Royal Ivey. It was the first start of the season for Ivey, the ninth-year man who had gone 212 regular-season games between starts.

At times, Collins has turned to Ivey off the bench in order to get into an opponent’s spark-plug point guard or Energizer Bunny-esque shooting guard. This time, he was asked to do it at the opening tip.

“I have to keep on doing what I do. This is nothing new,” Ivey said. “I have to slow them down and limit their touches, because once they get started, they’re hard to stop. Brandon Jennings — letting him get going early would be bad for us. You’ve got to be physical against guys like that.”

Jennings (18.6 points, 5.8 assists) and Ellis (18.8 points, 5.4 assists) are as dynamic as they get in a backcourt pairing, and both have made a case for a spot on the Eastern Conference’s All-Star Game roster.

The Bucks, who hosted the Sixers Tuesday, have thrived in the open court, thanks to Jennings and Ellis. Leading the league in blocked shots (7.6 per game) and ranking fourth in steals (8.6 per game), Milwaukee uses its defense to get out on the break.

“You really have to get back on this team,” Collins said of the Bucks. “They use blocked shots and steals to trigger what they do. … It’s a high-risk defense.”

That’s where Ivey comes in, giving Collins his seventh different starting-five configuration of the season. Ivey got the start in place of shooting guard Jason Richardson, who didn’t make the trip. He missed a second consecutive game with left knee synovitis.

•••Speaking of speed, the Sixers expended plenty of energy sprinting around the floor Monday, trying to erase a 17-point deficit in a loss to San Antonio.

Collins said he’s growing impatient with the slow starts from the Sixers, who have taken a lead into the second quarter only 10 times in their first 41 games of the season.

“We’ve got to get off to a better start,” Collins said. “We can’t keep digging ourselves 17-, 18-, 19-point holes. It takes too much out of you. All of a sudden, the game comes down in the balance and you don’t have energy to finish the game. Sometimes, plays you make at the end of the game are fatigue plays because you had to make up so much ground to get back into the ballgame.”

Collins said it was nothing Wright did or didn’t do against San Antonio that led to him being reinstated as a reserve for the Sixers. However, there’s no denying that Wright could have made a case for himself making a second straight start had he been shooting better.

Expected to be a 3-point threat when he joined the team in the offseason, Wright has been shooting 34 percent from 3-point range the last month, going 21-for-62 in his last 15 games. Not good numbers from a guy who once led the league in made treys.

Wright said it’s because he hasn’t been “getting shots in rhythm.”

“A lot of people don’t understand that getting a shot in rhythm could be the biggest thing,” he said. “It could be anything — stepping into a shot, off a pick-and-roll, whatever. That’s a big part of it. When you’re on the weak side, and you always have to have your knees bent and your arms raised because you never know when the ball is going to get to you and it makes a difference.”